


The Other Student

by etothey



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Nonstandard use of Frontline Titties of the Fifth, mentions of fictional webcomics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/etothey
Summary: Harrowhark Nonagesimus, foremost art student of her age, is both vexed and intrigued by her classmate's pornographic webcomic.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 25
Kudos: 74
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Other Student

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_spruce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_spruce/gifts).



Harrowhark Nonagesimus, foremost art student of her age, looked up from her careful study of the mostly-nude model. She'd already blocked in the major forms and anatomical landmarks--even people who disliked her, which were a lot of them, had to acknowledge her talent for anatomy--and had begun the painstaking work of detailing her figure. Another, lesser mind would have noted the shapeliness of the model, an elegant woman in her mid-twenties, but Harrow scarcely deigned to notice such mundane considerations. The whole point was, after all, to render the subtleties of the human body as accurately as possible.

That was Harrow's philosophy, anyway, a time-honored one endorsed by the instructor, a bald, cheerful man who simply went by Teacher.

Then there was the Other Student.

The figure-drawing class contained ten other students, but whenever Harrow thought of the Other Student, she specifically meant Gideon Nav. Gideon, with her flaming hair that might or might not be real, and the taunting gleam in her amber eyes. Gideon, who had the vigorous musculature more suited to a model herself than someone devoted to the fine arts. In a just world, people like Gideon would also have a telling tendency to flatten forms instead of drawing in the round, or hold her drawing implement funny, or put feet on backwards every so often (a more common malady than one would think, even at an elite institution like Canaan Atelier).

But no. Gideon was an excellent artist. Harrow knew this because she nitpicked everyone during group critiques, and Gideon, infuriatingly, provided very little _to_ nitpick. Harrow pointed out Palamedes Sextus's heavy-handed use of values, and Dulcie Septimus's wavering lines, and Ianthe Tridentarius's unseemly obsession with wet skin. Of Gideon's assignments, Harrow could only hem and haw and mutter that they were "technically proficient."

But Gideon's artwork wasn't just technically proficient. It had an inner glow of vitality that attracted viewers. Harrow had often been annoyed during the student shows when visitors clustered around Gideon's portraits, no matter how blasphemous they were. The Necrolord Prime in his role as protector, except he was giving the finger to a tentacled horror. Extremely shouty concept art depicting the legions of the Second and their shock troops, complete with lurid rivers of blood. Even the lovingly detailed octopus study--seriously, an _octopus_?--received murmurs of appreciation.

All of that Harrow could have borne. After all, she hadn't expected to breeze through Canaan Atelier unchallenged. She would simply have to work harder.

But there was working harder, and there was _this_.

Gideon had already finished _her_ life drawing, and never mind that Teacher normally exhorted his charges to "try ever harder, excelsior, nothing is truly done!" and similar blather. It was a good piece. No, Harrow had to admit, it was an _astounding_ piece. Hers would be as good when she had completed it, naturally--but she was slower, more meticulous. She hated that Gideon could produce works of such brilliance while making it look _fast and easy_.

No; her real problem was the fact that Gideon was working on her personal project right there in class, and Teacher was letting her.

Everyone in the atelier knew about Gideon's pet webcomic. She posted three times a week without fail. Harrow would never have admitted to reading it, but she too was one of the people who got up at 5 a.m. for the updates. Without fail.

Gideon--Gideon, who drew as though blessed by the Necrosaints, whose paintings displayed a mastery beyond her years--Gideon's magnum opus was the Frontline Titties of the Fifth. Its heroines were more notable for what they didn't wear than what they did. Here, Gideon's imagination took full flower--what breasts would look like if they didn't have to contend with gravity or good taste. It had not escaped Harrow's notice that Gideon's character designs expressed a preference for extremely busty women, as if the title of the webcomic hadn't suggested as much.

 _Am I really self-conscious about my figure because of a pornographic webcomic?_ Harrow asked herself scathingly. Even as her thoughts wandered, her stick of vine charcoal moved over the paper and its pleasingly rough texture, refining a detail here, adding a hint of shadow there. Oh, she, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, had her supporters. But people admired her on the basis of her intellect and talent, not because she was _pretty_. Not with her weedy thinness and the pointy, dour face that looked back at her from the mirror every morning. Especially mornings when she got up extra-early to catch up on Frontline Titties.

"Excuse me," a shy voice said from next to Harrow. Her tablemate, Dulcie. "Mind scooting over a bit? I usually avoid spoilers, but I want to see what's coming up next!"

Harrow was surprised that Dulcie couldn't hear her teeth grinding. Dulcie, who was terminally nice the way she was terminally sick, often offered compliments on Harrow's own efforts. She admired Harrow's technique tremendously, exclaimed over Harrow's series of portfolio pieces depicting the holy Lyctors, gushed embarrassingly over Harrow's employment of chiaroscuro. Dulcie would have been the first to name herself one of Harrow's friends, even if Harrow was hardly free with the reciprocal acknowledgment.

The fact remained, however, that Dulcie fangirled over Frontline Titties of the Fifth in a way that she had never squeed over anything Harrow had created.

"Sure," Harrow said shortly, and moved her chair over a precise six and a half inches so that Dulcie could obtain the desired view. That was another thing Harrow had mastered early: perspective and vantage points. A little-known fact about atelier life was that its postulants jostled mightily for the best seats and the best views--even if, by mutual silent agreement, no one talked about the time Ianthe had hung upside-down from the rafters, exposing her bloomers to all and sundry, in her pursuit thereof. After a brief and vicious series of scuffles during the first week of classes, Harrow had established her right to first pick of seats. Even Gideon had fetched up a distant fourth. And yet, and yet--Gideon didn't even seem to notice the handicap. It hadn't taken long for Harrow to figure out that Gideon didn't care because her _real_ attention was laser-focused on the next installment of Frontline Titties of the Fifth. Harrow wasn't anywhere near the field of battle.

Having ceded the best view to Dulcie, Harrow forced herself to swallow her bile and her distaste for the cheesecake subject matter and study Gideon's _technique_. She herself favored tight, precise thumbnails--Dulcie often gushed that from anyone else, they would have passed as finished works--while Gideon's possessed a certain energetic looseness. Harrow had to admit that Gideon had a knack for capturing the essence of a pose in a few deceptive, flowing strokes.

Teacher called a break for the model's sake. Harrow set her charcoal down. Gideon, on the other hand, scarcely seemed to notice. Her own ballpoint pen kept moving, sketching out panels, the placement of word bubbles, frank close-ups of languorous women and their assets.

"Do you think Regina the Fifth"--the heroine of Frontline Titties\--"is finally going to get together with her true love this time?" Dulcie stage-whispered to Harrow from behind her hand. Her enormous eyes sparkled with mischief, even if the whisper turned inevitably into a wracking cough and she had to fish out her blood-dotted handkerchief.

"I couldn't say," Harrow said stiffly. The thumbnails were certainly _suggestive_ , especially the one in which the characters in question sneaked off behind a supply truck--but Gideon, master tease that she was, had fooled her loyal viewers before.

Gideon must have heard them whispering behind her. Not like there was anywhere to hide in the studio. Her pen moved, paused, moved again, although it was impossible to see what she was drawing from beneath the coy cover of her hand.

Then Gideon glanced back over her shoulder, winked directly at Harrow, and uncovered the drawing. Harrow stared at a perfect little cartoon of herself, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, with her accustomed artist's smock trailing off into provocative wisps. Heat rushed to Harrow's face. She had no idea how to respond to this blatant act of--mockery? Flirtation? Something else?

Before she could say anything, accusatory or admiring or otherwise, Gideon tucked away the incriminating page of sketches and returned her attention to the assignment.

*

True to form, the 127th installment of Frontline Titties went up two days later. Harrow, no stranger to discipline, reluctantly conceded admiration for Gideon's ability to keep to a punishing production schedule.

The two top students had the privilege of singles in the dormitory, which meant that Harrow could read the webcomic without an audience catching her at it. Harrow's room proclaimed the tastes of an ascetic. She had no posters of the hottest Lyctors on the walls, which would have been borderline heretical in any case. She did not keep a pet or a potted plant. There was only the twin-sized bed, made to military standard every morning, the drafting desk where she kept all her drawing implements, a separate small desk for her laptop, and a couple worn pieces of furniture to store everything else. She could have moved out within an hour and no one would have found any trace of her essential personality left.

She was currently sitting before her laptop, mindful of her posture--ramrod-straight, or ramrod- _stiff_ , as her detractors would have said--and trying not to lean vulture-fashion toward the screen and its disturbingly enticing characters. Harrow couldn't keep her eyes off the buxom soldiers, their extremely revealing outfits, the fact that even in this schlockiest of genres Gideon couldn't help but show off her mastery of human anatomy, especially musculature. Gideon did love some good muscles. Harrow's own studies had focused more on skeletal structure--bones were _foundational_ , dammit, the Surface Anatomy School was for the birds--but to each their own. And she couldn't deny that Gideon's approach got results.

 _Who am I kidding?_ Harrow asked herself as the cavorting figures blurred together. Every time she looked at one of those confident, muscular, and yes, _sexy_ women, she didn't see Regina the Fifth, or Artemisiana, or any of their joyously ribald friends. She saw Gideon's face, and Gideon's firebrand hair, and Gideon's gleaming amber eyes.

Given the way she'd behaved toward Gideon early in the term, before she'd realized that the brash redhead had _mad skills_ , she'd be lucky if Gideon didn't hold a grudge. Expecting reciprocal romantic interest was out of the question.

Even so, at the end of the day, after an exhausting lesson on curvilinear perspective, Harrow curled up under her sheets and fell asleep dreaming of what it would be like to kiss Gideon.

*

A week later, Harrow was up early again, reading another installment of Frontline Titties. She'd pulled out a sketchbook on a whim and began sketching idly, without paying attention to what her pencil was doing. A line here, a curve there, the hollow of a woman's throat, the shadow between her breasts...

_Wait, what?_

Just as Harrow looked down at the page and realized what her pencil had conjured up, someone banged on the door.

Harrow's blood froze. How could they--no, there was no way for someone to know what she had just drawn.

"Party at Corona's tomorrow," one of Coronabeth's lackeys yelled, and moved on to the next door down the hall.

Harrow let out a sigh of relief. She bet Gideon would be there. Then she was cross at herself for letting her mind drift to the Other Student.

Her gaze slid down to the sketchbook page where she had drawn herself locked in a completely unplatonic clinch with Gideon Nav. Even if she had, with painful honesty, drawn her bosom at its real size, no rival for any of the women in Frontline Titties.

She was about to chide herself for self-pity and close the site when a new feature caught her eye: Gideon (or Gideon's webmaster) had added a new section to the forum. Ordinarily Harrow stayed out of the forum, because it was full of pandering idiots, but a new Fanart section? This she had to see.

Harrow regretted it almost immediately. Most of the fanart looked like it had been drawn by people whose idea of proper proportion came from chibis. But there were a few standouts. Against her will, she was particularly taken by a portrait of Regina the Fifth clad in even less clothing than usual, which took some doing, her improbable long hair blowing behind her like a banner. Even if the limbs were weirdly elongated and the boobs unconvincingly spherical.

Then Harrow saw who the fanartist was: YOUR #1 FAN, IANTHE TRIDENTARIUS.

Something in Harrow snapped. " _You're_ the #1 fan?" Harrow snarled under her breath. "With weak-ass art? Let me show you a _real fan_." And she turned to a new page in her sketchbook and got to work.

*

Harrow posted _her_ fanart under a pseudonym, of course. A simple dignified N. All right, it wasn't _much_ of a pseudonym. But a secret giddy part of her was pleased that she and Gideon shared that N: Nonagesimus and Nav.

It didn't take long for Harrow's pieces to overtake Ianthe's in likes and followers, even if Ianthe had a habit of leaving passive-aggressive comments like _Not bad, if you're into the Hyperrealist School_ and _I love how you picked the Pantone Color of the Year for the color of Artemisiana's scarf, v creative._ At least Dulcie's comments were just as sincerely gushing as they were in real life. (Dulcie must be the only person who became _nicer_ online than she was in real life.)

Gideon herself left glowing compliments on Harrow's works. Harrow would have basked in this, except Gideon left glowing compliments on _all_ the top nine sorted by likes.

Gideon also started taking seats _behind_ Harrow, instead of way up front the way she used to. Harrow missed the enticing rear views of Gideon, not just for her great ass (or so Harrow told herself) but for her impressively well-defined trapezius. Still, she would not unbend so far as to change _her_ choice of seat in response. It would have felt too much like a confession of interest.

Still, while Harrow might have been tempted to unbend enough to allow herself to gloat over her newfound dominance, she had only supplanted Ianthe as Gideon's #1 Fan. She wasn't Gideon's _girlfriend_. Over and over, she dreamt of Gideon's embrace, the heat of her mouth, the salt-sweet of her skin.

Over and over, she woke, sweat-damp and shaking, amorous and aching, and told herself that she could admit her not-very-secret identity to Gideon another day.

*

Harrow was in the midst of her most ambitious fanart yet, not in technical terms but in lewdness. A mere month ago it would have been unthinkable to produce art of such a lascivious bent. Amazing what a few weeks' descent into the world of cartoon porn could do for one's sensibilities. _Just you watch, Ianthe,_ Harrow thought vindictively. _You're not the only one who can draw a--_

The door's handle turned.

Harrow bit back a yelp and whirled, brandishing her 6B pencil as if _that_ could protect her against the intruder. Hadn't she locked that door?

"Locks on these doors are super weak," Gideon Nav said from the doorway, flexing her arm fetchingly. She had a _wonderful_ bicep, immodestly revealed by her T-shirt. "Whatcha got there, Harrow?"

Harrow could have stood her ground. Could have told Gideon to get the hell out. Instead, she stood frozen as Gideon closed the door behind her and crossed the floor to snatch the sketchbook from Harrow's nerveless hands.

Gideon whistled, low and appreciative. "Didn't think you were the fanart type," she said, "but this is primo stuff. So much better than having Ianthe Tridentarius pop into my room in one of those horrible dresses with ruffles and volunteer to 'model' for me."

"I didn't realize," Harrow said stiffly, "that you liked to mock your followers in person."

"Is that what you think this is?" Gideon demanded. She set the sketchbook down with a gentleness that made Harrow freeze up all over again because of its unexpectedness. Her gaze met Harrow's, hot and pitiless. "Tell me, Harrow, what _are_ you into?"

 _You,_ Harrow almost said. _I'm into you._ But her lips would not move, nor her tongue.

Gideon read the scorching desperation in Harrow's eyes, however, for she grabbed Harrow and kissed her, long and deep.

Harrow melted into Gideon's arms. She imagined this was what it felt like to be marrow dissolving into broth, the inevitable uncandling of the body's inner secrets. An answering star of heat flared in her groin.

After the kiss broke, Harrow said, as breathless as though she'd dashed up a flight of stairs, "I thought you liked the bosomy type. Like Coronabeth." The words escaped her before she could stop them.

Gideon rolled her eyes. "We all know who Coronabeth _really_ wants. She's just trying to make her jealous." Gideon didn't elaborate on this mysterious pronouncement. Her voice lowered just a tad, although Harrow glanced nervously at the door; she knew how thin the walls were. "Tell you the truth, Harrow, all those dirty, dirty poses? I was thinking of things I could do with _you_."

This seemed, to Harrow's star-stunned brain, to be as likely as the Necrolord Prime appearing en déshabillé to volunteer as a model for tonight's session.

Her mouth, once unleashed, wasn't done blurting out embarrassing things. "You like busty women," was what it said.

Gideon cracked up. Her entire face lit up like fireworks. "Harrow," she said, "I like _drawing_ busty women. Doesn't mean"--she was _leering_ \--"they're the only women I get the hots for. Just because you draw excruciatingly detailed still lifes with snow leeks in them, do you get hot and bothered for them?"

"All right," Harrow said, surprised by the hoarseness of her own voice, "prove it to me."

Gideon kissed her again. Her hands wandered as if they had gotten lost and were taking the scenic route around Harrow's bird-wing clavicles, Harrow's shoulders, Harrow's breasts with their extremely attentive nipples. Harrow sank into the sensations; was ready to beg for more.

Then Gideon released the kiss and grinned wickedly. "Prove it? Will I ever. Hand me the sketchbook."

This Harrow did, at first mystified and then outraged when Gideon also purloined the 6B pencil. Gideon snaked a possessive arm around Harrow's waist, drawing her to the bed. The two of them sat side by side, intertwined. With an enviable dexterity, Gideon balanced the sketchbook on her knees and began to draw.

She drew Harrow. She drew Harrow in exquisite detail. Every sweep of the pencil, every glistening graphite curve, struck Harrow like a caress. Oh, Harrow had drawn self-portraits before, as exercises, but those pieces had lacked kindness, or caring.

For the first time, Harrow saw herself through the eyes of someone who looked at her pointed face and severe cap of hair and prim, ascetic taste in clothes, and found her _hot like burning_.

Gideon drew Harrow in for a third kiss. The sketchbook fell forgotten to the floor. "And that's just the beginning," she said into Harrow's ear, "of what I want to do with you."

Harrow stared directly into those molten amber eyes, pressing herself up against Gideon's solid form, and breathed, "There's no time like the present."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Irusu for the beta.


End file.
